Answering Service for DM campaign

[Luis Toledo]

I have a full time job and am just starting out. My wife is a SAHM, but we have two small children, so she can't reliably answer the phone. I'm about to send out my first yellow letter campaign and have determined that making the most of the leads created requires the phone to be answered live every single time. I'll try VM options later to test whether there is really a difference, but I'm determined to go with a service at first (IOW, please don't tell me to use GV and send everything to VM ;)

I''ve researched a bunch of different services, but actual recommendations from real customers in our business are hard to come by.

So, if you've used an answering service to field calls for your business would care to share your experience (good or bad), I'd love to hear it.

My plan is to have the AS collect very basic info at first, basically asking for name, contact info and the address of the property so that I can do some research and call them back ASAP.

So what's the skinny on answering services? What are they good for? What aren't they good for? Who have you used and what was your experience? Thanks in advance!